Some cool demos first

These should give you a good reason to be interested in using these new techniques.

CSS3 Flash Light

3D SearchBox

CSS3 photo effect

CSS3 iOS icons

Page Flip effect

CSS3 overlays

CSS3 solar system infography

CSS3 Tools

Now that you’ve seen some of the cool things your can do with CSS3, here are some tools you can use to make your own.

CSS3 Pie

PIE makes Internet Explorer 6-8 capable of rendering several of the most useful CSS3 decoration features.

CSS3 generator

CSS3 made easy, generate any .

CSS3 Cheatsheet

Downloadable in PDF format for better printing.

Modernizr

Modernizr uses feature detection to test the current browser against upcoming features like rgba(), border-radius, CSS Transitions and many more. These are currently being implemented across browsers and with Modernizr you can start using them right now, with an easy way to control the fallbacks for browsers that don’t yet support them.

Toggle CSS3 Bookmarklet

By installing and clicking this bookmarklet, you can turn off (and back on) the most common CSS3 improvements.

Web Designer’s checklist

Before using a CSS3 property or selector, check out which browsers support it.

Gradient generator

Easily generate some CSS3 gradients.

Font Squirrel @font-face generator

Get your fonts ready to be included in your web designs.

CSS-Tricks’ button maker

Quickly create a pure CSS button that includes some CSS3 properties.

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CSS3 demos and tools

Somewhere I believe there is an Island of Misfit Designs. It contains Moleskine notebooks filled with sketches that never found a home – graphics that didn’t match a company’s vision. But all that effort doesn’t have to be for naught – below are a handful of outlets for your creativity. Not only can you make some money off your rejected work, but you also might earn some new business!

Threadless

This popular website has a huge catalog of unique T-shirts emblazoned with designs submitted by anyone. The Threadless community votes on its favorites, and winners get their submissions printed on shirts – along with $2,000. Pop culture references, trendy owls and ninjas as well as gorgeous illustrations reign on this site, so scan the pages of shirts in categories such as Zombies, Ironic, Typography and Bikes and then submit your graphic designs that have the most chance of getting votes. Don’t forget to rally your networking crew to vote for your submission!

http://www.threadless.com

Etsy

Etsy has become a full-time job for some crafty people, but it can also be a way to come up with new mediums for your graphic design on the side. Think about printing greeting cards or stickers – something you can do affordably – with one of your bold images or witty statements. Then set up a shop on Etsy, which provides you with an easy-to-navigate page in which you provide photos of your wares and descriptions. Signing up is free, and fees are minimal: 20 cents to list an item for four months and a 3.5 percent transaction fee for each item of yours that is sold.

http://www.etsy.com

CafePressand Zazzle

But maybe you don’t have any spare cash to invest in products – that’s where CafePress and Zazzle come in. You set up your own gallery on each site and choose your design to be on T-shirts, posters, mugs or an array of other products. Visitors to each site can then find your items. Each site has different levels of shops, so you can spend a little to make more or simply opt for the free shops.

http://www.cafepress.com
http://www.zazzle.com

99 Designsand Brandstack

99 Designs is aimed at businesses rather than consumers. Companies hold contests by submitting a design brief, and then designers enter their submissions for prize money. The company chooses the winner as well as a prize amount. Categories include logos, web design, merchandise and more. Meanwhile, Brandstack has the same idea as 99 Designs but in reverse – graphic designers submit their logos, and companies sift through the site until they find one that meshes with their vision. It’s free to sign up with Brandstack, and you get 85 percent commission when your design is purchased.

http://99designs.com/
http://brandstack.com

This is a guest article by Jennifer Moline, who writes for the PsPrint Blog http://blog.psprint.com. PsPrint is an online printing http://www.psprint.com/ solutions company, which you can follow on Twitter and Facebook.

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How to Make Money Off of Your Graphic Design

Being adept in your profession means you have an understanding of all the components, aspects and tasks that need to be created and performed to achieve something that satisfies the business requirements. While the layperson, having no understanding of this, imagines it to be a simple arrangement, not needing much to be done. And so it is with web content management systems. The client imagines a simple website where they can publish this or that for people to read. With some pictures. With a preview. That can be edited. By various people in the organisation. With the edits tracked. And allow users to comment. While being able to roll back to previous versions. And create additional pages. In Spanish and in English.

Heard this before? Well the more you know the more you can set your client’s expectations. Educate them as to what their idea of a simple website actually involves. Or if you’re doing this for yourself then you’re going to have to find all this out one way or another. Below is a high-level overview of CMS’ and also a couple of examples.

First thing that needs to be done is to get an idea of the range of functionality that is required. Here’s a brief list of typical functionality as a starting point:

• Multilingual
• Delegation, permissions
• Roll-back, versioning
• User generated content
• Asset management
• Templates for new pages
• Meta-data management
• WYSIWYG Preview
• Workflow management
• Design and layout
• Extensibility
• End use

Know Your Requirements!

Knowing in advance what the CMS is going to be used for is critical to selecting the correct one. And the use of content on the web is extraordinarily varied. Consequently so are the content management systems that are out there. Let’s start with some simpler ones.

There are two main types of website. Most larger websites are dynamic websites where, after receiving a request from a user, generate the HTML on the fly. For these you need to have your CMS embedded on the server side. But simpler websites, ones that have static HTML documents can have their content managed by much simpler CMS’. And some of the simplest CMS’ out there are entirely web based.

Web Based Options

By web based CMS I mean there is nothing to install on the server and next to nothing that needs to be done with the HTML. You simply give the remote CMS application read/write access to your static HTML pages. The remote CMS application then reads in your pages and gives you back a web based interface that allows you to make changes. The remote CMS application then uploads the revised pages back to your server. And they key thing here is that there is literally nothing to install on your server. Examples of this type of CMS is TypeRoom and Cushy CMS.

Cushy CMS

TypeRoom

These simple CMS packages are very light on functionality and are not very extensible. Many would barely rate them as a CMS. But for when your requirements really are just to be able to make simple typographical changes and put up a picture, then these web-based CMS’ are a godsend. Especially if you have a non-technical client.

Need More ‘Oomph’?

Content management for dynamic sites is an entirely different kettle of fish. For these you have to install something on the server that works in unison with your web and database applications. For simple sites you can sidestep the database requirement, for example by using CMSimple, which in effect has its own database built in, but make sure you’re not going to need a proper database down the track.

CMSimple

If your requirements ask for a proper database, and serious management functionality then you’re going to have to look at the bigger systems. The most common of these are the PHP/MySQL packages such as MODx, TextPattern or SilverStripe. But there are others based on other languages, such as Radiant CMS based on Ruby. These packages use mark-up languages, such as Textile, to give excellent layout and design functionality. A port of Radiant to PHP resulted in Frog CMS which has become an independent CMS in it’s own right.

MODx

SilverStripe

Radiant CMS

Frog CMS

Often the package you select depends on externally imposed technical restrictions. For example a client may have technical staff with expertise in PHP. Or they already have MySQL as the database. After that though the next thing that’s going to dictate the selection of CMS is the end use application. A lot of websites these days are blogging websites, and their requirements are limited to that specialisation. Packages like WordPress and Moveable Type are essentially blogging CMS’, although they can often be extensible and cover other functionality. WordPress is a classic example of a popular CMS where add-ons have allowed it to cover a wide range of content management applications.

WordPress

Moveable Type

Packages such as Radiant and SilverStripe are aimed more at web-publishing content management that blogging. Radiant is an example of a mature CMS with extensive third-party tools and add-ons that make it suitable as the underlying technology for a large scale web-design business.

How About an All-in-One Solution?

Another solution worth looking into is a combined hosting and CMS service. These take everything away from you and you don’t have to worry about anything too technical. Of course you don’t have much control either. UCoz is an example of one such service. There are similar services blogging, such as Tumblr. With these full service solutions you don’t get low level access to the servers. So no server side scripting or sophisticated database management.

UCoz

Tumblr

As can be seen from the above discussion, there are many aspects that influence the choice of content management system. Some are within your control, and some are not. But if you have grasp of all of these aspects it means that you can set your client’s expectations accurately and early, or if you are the client, it means you can temper your requirements with a little realism.

About the Author

This article was written by Liz Tran, a freelance web designer from Australia. You can also follw her on Twitter.

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Content Management Systems – A Need to Know Overview

For most designers you will have had the question, “can you fix this photo for me?” asked at more than once in your lifetime. Whether for family or friends, or that one design job that requires you to retouch an image, here is a tutorial that will help you enhance and retouch a photo.

In this tutorial I will be retouching the photo with techniques including the healing and clone brush, using adjustment layers, liquifying and color burn and dodge.

I have selected a photo from a free stock photo site called, stock.xchng.

Here the photographer is ‘Trublueboy’, his profile can be viewed here: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/trublueboy and also his Flickr stream.

So download this image or another so we can start to retouch and enhance a photo!

Step 1:

Open the image in Photoshop and then duplicate the background layer. This can be done by right clicking the layer in the Layers Palette and selecting, ‘Duplicate Layer. Remember for good design practice rename your layers to something obvious, here I have named it Chelsea after the name of the image from Trublueboy.

Step 2:

Now we will get onto cleaning the image. By cleaning, I mean removing spots, blotches and wrinkles if any. To clean the photo, use the Clone Stamp Tool (S) and Healing Brush Tool (J). With either these tools press alt while selecting an area that is smooth to clone or with the healing brush tool clicking alt to define a source point to be used to repair the image.

Step 3:

Now that the image is clean lets use some Adjustment Layers to help boost the color and levels. Select the layer in the Layers Palette and then click the button that resembles a circle half black, half white. This icon should be located at the bottom of the Layers Palette. Click this and select Levels, now adjust the toggles to get the right lighting for the shadows, mid-tones and highlights.

Next we will add a Color Balance Adjustment Layer. So select your layer and then click the Adjustment Layer icon, then select Color Balance. This will bring up the dialogue box, with this select each shadow, highlight and mid-tones and move the toggles to achieve a richer color. Here I wanted to produce a much richer, warmer color, as outdoor photography can sometimes have quite cold color tones.

The final Adjustment layer is the Hue/Saturation Layer, add this and then toggle the saturation bar to be slightly higher, this will make the colors stand out much more.

Step 4:

Time for some surgery! Or in Photoshop’s case, Liquify. Here the use of liquify we will make her lips fuller and eyes slightly rounder. Select the layer and in the top menu bar select Filter > Liquify. Use the tool now to push out the tops and bottoms of the lips to create more fullness in them and also increase the roundness of the eyes.

Step 5:

Now we get onto the retouching section. Create a new Layer (Shift + ctrl + N or Command + ctrl + N). Here we will airbrush with the Paint Brush Tool (B), to give her a more glowing complexion. So select the Eye Dropper Tool (I) and change the sample size to something bigger say around 30-40px average. Select somewhere that is the right skin tone and with the Paint Brush Tool (B), on a soft brush of around 300px and at 15% opacity, paint on areas to smooth the complexion. Remember to keep re-sampling the area with a new tone with the Eye Dropper Tool to get the right tones for airbrushing.

Do the same for the lips and eyes and hair, remember to create them on a new layer so that the colors do not run over each other.

Step 6:

Next on the agenda is to add some highlights to certain areas. This is going to be done with the Dodge/Burn Tool (O). Select the Dodgy Tool (O), this tool will make areas lighter, so apply to areas such as the eye iris, hair highlights, and skin areas to enhance the glow and lines of the photo.

Next use the Burn Tool (O) to make certain areas darker, so the line of the lips and the eye lashes and brow, as well as areas of the hair.

Step 7:

The last enhancing Photoshop effect is the High Pass Filter. This filter extracts high frequency detail from the image and when coupled with a Layer blend Mode it can give some great detail to an image.
First off duplicate the Chelsea Layer, this can be done by right clicking the Layer and selecting ‘Duplicate Layer’. Then in the menu bar at the top, go Filter > Other > High Pass Filter, then toggle the bar to around 2 pixels, you can go higher and experiment what level is best for you, but the more pixels in the High Pass Filter the more sharp and grainy it will become.

Next set this Layer to Linear Light, this will allow the sharp areas and highlights of the High Pass Filter layer through. Essentially it is burning and dodging areas of the top layer through to the bottom. This filter is great for giving back some texture and detail after all the retouching to restore the photo to a more real look.

Final Thoughts:

So here we have it the original and the retouched. As you can see the big difference made from some great filters and blend modes in Photoshop.

About the Author

This article was written by Liz Tran, a freelance web designer from Australia. You can also follw her on Twitter.

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Enhancing and making a photo dynamic in Photoshop

When creating a website one of the most important things to get right is the layout, the UI – user interface as you would call it, is something that is crucial to conveying the information and point of your website. There are many kinds of website layout designs. However the main point of a website is to convey understanding to the user.

One of the critical requirements of an informative website is that it gives the user confidence that their time is being well spent. If the user feels that the website is haphazard then they will lose confidence that they will be able to quickly find the information they need or that the website will be able to perform the function they want. This initial ‘feel’ for the website is used by users as a screening device, quickly filtering out websites that may be time wasters. The user wants signal, not noise.

So why use grids?

If a website is designed with a structured layout, then that feeling of structure comes through to the user in their first impression. It implies that thought has been given to how the website is to deliver its information to the user and therefore gives the user confidence in the website.

As designer you want to create that structured, designed impression for the user. So using a grid is just a formalisation of something that a designer is trying to do anyway. It makes it more explicit. It gives the designer a reference to help them realise their design.

But it is important to remember that the grid is only a reference. It would curtail a designer’s creativity if it was followed strictly. Some opponents of grids might imagine them to be some form of enforced constraint on what you design. This is wrong and it is important to realise that the grid is there to help you achieve your design aim. It should in no way ‘limit’ you.

Grids are utilised as a structural foundation for a website, it can enhance the overall look and feel by allowing you to create a stronger layout for your elements.

Dribble – Great site with strong grid layout.

Sushi and Robots – You can actually see the grid in this one!

How do grids work?

Well, in your head you will already have a pre-conception of your layout. You need to find, or create, a back-ground image of vertical and horizontal lines that matches this preconception. Paste this image into a layer in Photoshop, lock it and make it your top layer. You can toggle it on and off as you need. Once it’s in there, when you choose to place an element, the presence of a grid line is a suggestion of an aesthetic location for that element. It’s not a Photoshop guide, as you may want to put these in as well. As it is a suggestion, most pre-made grids use soft colours or shading, rather than hard lines. At least for the columns anyway.

Your choice of grid will depend on your preconception of the website layout. But the essence of grid design is that the grid columns are all the same width, and that you then superimpose page layout columns as multiples of the grid columns. The principle is then to minimize the number of grid columns. If you have a two column page layout with a first column larger than the second column in the ratio of say, 4 to 3, then a 12 column grid is used, with the first layout column spaning 4 grid columns and the second layout column spanning 3 grid columns. Then, when setting out elements within the layout columns, if you align them to the grid columns it creates an appealing aesthetic. Aesthetic is subjective, and therefore it is ultimately your decision as to what resolution you want for your grid columns. Typically nicely divisible numbers are used, the most common being twelve, which is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6. Sixteen is also popular.

Vertical layout should also be structured and grids usually have horizontal lines ruled on them. These are typically the same height as the columns are wide although they are often spaced closer than that. One philosophy is that the baseline of all text aligns to this grid however designers tend to be less formal with vertical layout than horizontal columns.

12 Grid Layout:

Example of 960.gs Grid Layout:

So where are the Grids at?

There are many grid systems that can be downloaded. Templates are typically set to particular widths to suit standard websites. For example 960 pixels.

The Grid System, found at TheGridSystem.org, has great templates and information on different types of grid systems. You can download grids and learn about grid systems, design philosophies that use grids and also design in general.

960-Grid, found at 960.gs is used for 960 pixels width website design and comes in two forms, 12 column and 16 column. It is pretty comprehensive and comes with a css generator tool and an html generator tool. 960-Grid is good for sketching, wire-framing, designing and coding because it includes tools to help with all of these processes. Not just the grid image for the designer.

Note that like 960-Grid, Blueprint is also a css famework but doesn’t have templates for the designer.

GridSystem.org:

Design: Art and Science

“The grid system is an aid, not a guarantee. It permits a number of possible uses and each designer can look for a solution appropriate to his personal style. But one must learn how to use the grid; it is an art that requires practice.”
Josef Müller-Brockmann

Words like grid, structure, foundation and system are all very firm, hard words that are being used to describe something that in reality is a helpful guide, intended to be used in a fluid manner. Grids are a suggested alignment to be followed as a general rule but to be broken out of whenever the design calls for it. None-the-less, using a grid system does provide a foundation to the website, that when the elements of website are added, results in the impression of structure. It is this impression of structure that will give the user confidence that they are in the hands of a professional designer.

Some great examples of grid based websites:

About the Author

This article was written by Liz Tran, a freelance web designer from Australia. You can also follw her on Twitter.

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The Use of Grids in Website Design

For this tutorial I have downloaded a few things; water splash brushes from Brusheezy.com, stock photos and one font.

The water splash brushes can be found here: Brusheezy Water Brushes

For the stock photos I went in search of water splashes in glasses and water splashes in general, a good source was istock.com for cheap stock photo.  Lastly the font was sourced from dafont.com it is called Val: Val Font

Step 1:

First off start a new document 1920×1200 pixels.

Then Fill the background with black using the paint bucket tool (G).

Step 2:

Using the Rectangle Tool (U), on Shape Layer option (this option is the top left-hand icons, the first one is Shape Layer) draw out a rectangle to fill the entire bottom half of the screen. When this layer is created double click it to bring up the Layer Styles, then select Gradient Overlay option and select the handles of the gradient and change to a light grade of navy to a light blue, here I have used #325372 (light navy) – # b9d2e6 (light blue).

Then add a Drop Shadow of # a8c1d5, Opacity 100%, Angle -4, Distance 4px, Spread 0, and Size 10px.

Step 3:

Again using the Rectangle Tool (U), on Shape Layer option (this option is the top left-hand icons, the first one is Shape Layer) draw out a rectangle to fill the entire top half of the screen. When this layer is created double click the layer in the layers palette to bring up the Layer Styles, then select Gradient Overlay option and select the handles of the gradient and change to a light blue to an even lighter blue then white, here I have used # c7d8ea (light blue) – # f4fcfe (light blue) – # ffffff (white).

Step 4:

Next using the Text Tool (T), type out a word you want to manipulate, here I am just going to go with ‘water’! I am using the font Val because it resembles a sort of glass tumbler feel and it will also be easy to add the great splashes to.

Here I will add a Gradient Overlay, so double click the text layer in your layers palette and select Gradient Overlay. Here I have added a gradient of black to dark navy to light blue to white; #000000 (black) – # 31475f (Dark navy) – # f0fafc (light blue) – #ffffff (white).

Step 5:

Next step is to make the text more of a ‘tumbler type’ feel, so here we will look at making a specialized gradient layer and then using some layer effects to make the layers stand out.
So duplicate the text layer, this can be done by right clicking the Layer and selecting Duplicate Layer.

Then we want to Rasterize the text, this is so we can create some effects for on the layer, adding effects or different gradients.

Then clear the Layer Styles so that our effects will show through when we change the text layer, this can be done by right clicking and then selecting Clear Layer Style

Lastly we need to select the text, not the Layer but the actual outline of the Rasterized text, this is done by right clicking and selecting Select Pixels.

With the layer selected use the Gradient Tool (G) with your water gradient chosen, and the Radial gradient option selected (this is in the top middle section of the menu bar).

You should be able to make a nice radial gradient of white going out to the darker colors along the edges.

Next we will be manipulating the layers to have a glass like feel.

Now select the Layer you have just manipulated and in the Layers palette select Overlay as the Layer Blend Mode.

Now select the original Text Layer and change its Layer effect option to Color Burn. This should give an overall nice blend of both top and bottom layer.

The last step for the text layers is the Opacity effect. Here select the first text layer and change this to 75% opacity, this can be found in the Layers Palette in the top right corner and the same with the other text layer but change this one to 65%.

Step 6:

So for the water splashes effect gather all your water splash imagery together and let’s start adding the splashes in!
So here is a selection of my stock imagery I will be using.

In this step all I have done is cut out the bits of splashes I required and with the Eraser Tool (E) and, using a soft edged brush, erased their background out.

Note that I have made all my splash layers black. This can be done by Desaturating the layer, you can do this by using the Hue/Saturation setting (Ctrl+U or Command+Ctrl+U) Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Then sliding the Saturation bar all the way to the left, this will drain all the color out of the layer. If this makes the layer have a washed out look just adjust the Brightness/ Contrast, this is also in Image > Adjustments > Brightness/ Contrast.

Step 7:

Next make all the splash layers Blend Modes into Color Burn, this will give it a crisp, clear look of water!

Now I want the font to blend much more with the splashes and so I will erase out the areas where the splashes join so it looks much more fluid. Use the Erase Tool (E) set to a big soft brush for around 200px and 50% opacity. Then erase the areas of the font that are overlapping with the splashes.

Step 8:

Time to use those cool Brushezzy water brushes we downloaded earlier.

Here I just picked out some droplets that will go nicely on as ground-cover. Set the brush color to a dark grey and place them on. Then I changed the Layer Mode type to Overlay to create a nice blend with the background gradient layer.

Step 9:

Now to give the image a color lift I’ll add an overlay gradient layer. To do this create a new layer on top of all the other layers, then use the gradient fill tool (G). This is the same as the Bucket tool, so if you can’t see it, just press down on the icon in your tool bar and it will reveal the Gradient Tool. Now select a nice blue gradient in the options in the top left (if there are no options just click on the current gradient and it will reveal the Gradient Editor for you to select your colors).

Lastly, let’s make this layer blend in nicely; here I have changed the Layer mode to Soft Light.

Final Result:

Here is the final result; a water effect typography. Now you don’t have to use as many splashes as I have, as I have added a lot of ‘splash effects’ to give you the idea of how they can be incorporated. It is a nice touch to have one or two but overall this is a fun easy tutorial to do that will give you a cool water effect.

About the Author

This article was written by Liz Tran, a freelance web designer from Australia. You can also follw her on Twitter.

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How to Create Cool Water Effect Typography

If you are a regular web worker and/or a freelancer, you must already work with a lot of online apps like Google Docs or YouSendIt. Many online applications are free, but some others are not. Following are the ones I would recommend.

1. Fuze Meeting

This one could save me in a near future, as you probably don’t know I will move to live in China in a couple of months. I’ve been looking for solutions to make my not tech-saavy clients feel better about collaborating from a distance. I’ve been trying it for a few weeks now and I can say that it just rocks. It’s 100% browser-based, lets you share your screen and organize HD conferences. If you’re working with long-distance clients, I suggest that you give it a try, you can try it free for 30 days.

2. FreshBooks

Invoicing and accounting in general are the worst sides of freelancing (well… except if you are a freelance accountant). For the average freelancer, FreshBooks takes a lot of the annoyances of invoicing away, it’s really a perfect fit for web workers too. Track your expenses and time, manage your contractors or re-bill your clients painlessly with this wonderful app.

3. Basecamp

Although I’m not a Basecamp user yet, I’ve worked with it for some clients. It’s a very simple and straightforward, probably the best I’ve seen so far when it comes to multiple users project management.

What about you? Which other paid online apps would you recommend?

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3 web applications that are worth paying for

1. Site search

By tracking the searches on your website, you will know a little more about what’s on your visitors’ mind. You can check if they found some interesting results or if the information they were looking for was missing. There is many ways to track this, here are two:

Track site search with a WordPress plugin

If you have a Search box on your blog, Search Meter automatically records what people are searching for and whether they are finding what they are looking for. The plugin is great, but if you already have many plugins on your website I wouldn’t recommend installing one more. Get the plugin here.

Track site search with Google Analytics

Tracking what people are searching on your website is fairly easy with Google Analytics, to do so you should go to your website profile, then edit your Main Website profile information. You can then add the query parameter (usually “s” for WordPress blogs).

2. Track your new RSS feed subscribers

If you want to get more feed subscribers, one good thing would be to have data about which visitors are more likely to subscribe. Knowing that helps you to chose how to focus your efforts to attract such visitors. This technique is not perfect because only tracks clicks to the feed, you can not be sure that people have subscribed. At least you will know who shows interest for the subscription.

How to track your feed subscribers

To track your new subscribers, you should start by setting a goal in Google Analytics, to do this you should go in your website’s Profile Settings, then add a goal and set it as in the following image. The goal url doesn’t have to be an existing one.

To set the goal in your template, you should then add the goal in your WordPress theme. You can do so by adding this code (check the Google Analytics help though, you may not be using the same version than I do).

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> RSS Feed" href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/DailyDesignerNews" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/rss/subscription');" />

3. Track document downloads

If you take the time and effort to create textures for download, vectors or an e-book, why wouldn’t you want to know how many people download it. To track these downloads, there is many solutions, following are two.

Use the WordPress Download Monitor plugin

This is the solution I chose, it makes adding new tracked download from a WordPress post very easy. The only missing capability to this plugin is that it doesn’t track the referrer for the downloads. Get the plugin here.

Track downloads with Google Analytics

Tracking downloads with Google Analytics works the same way as tracking RSS subscribers. Just set a goal for tracking links and add it to your file’s link like suggested in point number 2 above. For more advanced users and better productivity, you may want to have a look at how to automatically track file downloads in Google Analytics.

4. Track your WordPress comments with Google Analytics

Again, you will have for that to create a goal in your website’s profile.

Then, in the comments.php file in your template, you’ll need to find the submit button and to add the onclick javascript piece in it as follows.

<input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="<?php echo attribute_escape(__('Submit Comment')); ?>" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/submit/comment');" />

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4 things you should track on your blog or website

1. Install an extended version of TinyMCE

This is one of the first things I realize that the person who will maintain the website is not internet-saavy. To avoid annoying “Where is the blablabla button?” question, just install this wordpress plugin and you’ll save some precious time when teaching how to use the WordPress admin. The TinyMCE advanced plugin gives you a setting page where you can add many buttons to the visual editor.

2. Add rich text to your widgets

Do you know what happens the first time your client tries to add an image in a sidebar widget? He calls you, usually when you have something much more important to finish. Hopefuly someone created this nifty little wordpress plugin to add rich-text widgets in your admin.

3. Make pages management easier

Managing pages is a little too abstract in the regular WordPress for most clients, again there is a nice WordPress plugin that simplifies the pages management task by using a wonderful drag and drop interface.

4. Give them better control over the navigation

This is not necessary for smaller sites with simple navigation, but it will be for websites using several navigations mixing categories and pages. With the WordPress Navigation List Plugin, your client takes full control over their navigation with an easy-to-use interface.

5. Give them limited permissions

Your clients will never use some functionalities in WordPress, why should they even access them then? Installing the Adminize plugin will let you decide what your client can access, thus limiting the potential mistakes and decluttering the admin.

6. Simplify the WordPress admin’s interface

Honestly this isn’t a hug improvement, but the Admin Trim Interface plugin will help your client to find his way faster by decluttering the interface.

7. Give them advanced control over the contact forms

Forms creation or modification are a quite complicated task for the regular internet user, to let your client work on his website’s forms, I would suggest one of these two plugins:

• cforms II: the one I use on Designer Daily, it has a simple form admin area but can be a little annoying to upgrade (no auto upgrade).
• Contact Form 7: a plugin I used on several clients websites, easy to install and configure.

8. Let them access stats from within the WordPress admin

Why would you do that? Simply because some clients are not too familiar with handling multiple accounts for web services, this will then make their life easier by giving them all the info they need in one place. For that I’d suggest these two plugins:

• Google Analyticator: integrates Google Analytics stats in your WordPress admin.
• Feed stats: integrates Feedburner stats in your admin.

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8 ways to make WordPress easier to use for your clients

jQuery’s official website

Sounds like obvious advice, but jQuery has a very good documentation available for both beginners or advanced users, the two sections you should absolutely bookmark are the documentation and the tutorials.

1. jQuery tutorials

This is a page that lists a comprehensive list of quality tutorials in several languages, I’ve been learning a lot from there.

2. jQuery docs

Not for beginners, but this section will let you browse references and find most of the informations that you could need.

Blogs and websites

Like for other popular frameworks, jQuery gets some websites dedicated to it. The following websites are great resources for anyone wanting to learn jQuery.

3. Learning jQuery

Multi-author weblog providing jQuery tutorials, demos, and announcements. There is tutorials for all skill levels.

4. jQuery for Designers

One of my favorite jQuery related resources for visual effects.

5. Learn jQuery Now

Lots of great tips and tutorials for the jQuery learner.

6. jQuery for absolute beginners video series

If you are starting from scratch, these videos will explain you in details how to do some things with jQuery.

7. jQuery How-To

A tutorial blog for jQuery, good to follow for great advice.

8. Visual jQuery

Not exactly a place to learn jQuery, but I understood a lot about the framework by getting a visual overview of the functions.

Books about jQuery

Some people learn better from books, the best advantage of working with it is that you’ll get a better overview and deeper understanding of the topic.

9. jQuery in Action

This book introduces you to the jQuery programming model and guides you through the major features and techniques you’ll need to be productive immediately.

10. jQuery: Visual QuickStart Guide

This book will teach readers how to make the most of jQuery using the task-based, step-by-step, visual format.

11. jQuery Cookbook

Learn how to add components from the jQuery library to your websites and web applications, with detailed recipes for tasks ranging from basic integration to complex user interface development.

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Learning jQuery: 11 excellent resources